Peer Pressure

print on archival paper
2014-2015

Swapping the skin of fruit is an apparently simple act that contains associations to international relations and identity. In one sense it is a light-hearted anthropomorphism that plays with the idea of adopting the skins of others. Playful as it might be, it alludes to the circulation of cultures as a result of globalization. Fruit, like people, are frequently subject to displacement with many native species actually grown or sold in foreign environments. Its title is a word play referring to the Dutch word for pear, and the English peer pressure that suggests the desire to be as the other and a standardisation that might result, the increasingly prevalence of plastic-surgery to fit a singular model of beauty just one of its affects.

The 500 years exhibition included three interrelated bodies of work that take the lifespan of a plastic bag as a historical period. Instead of looking forward, however, it looks back to link a period of history that has defined the contemporary age, from the earliest colonisation of Latin America, the Renaissance in Europe and the subsequent modernisation, industrialisation and globalization that pervade contemporary life.